


The Valley of Shadows

by estelraca



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Multi, Spooky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27256861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estelraca/pseuds/estelraca
Summary: Jyn and the rest of Rogue One are chasing down Imperial agents when they stumble across an area they really shouldn't have.  They have everything they need to get through any trial in each other, though.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso/Bodhi Rook, Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	The Valley of Shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rivulet027](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivulet027/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this! I absolutely adore this trio and loved getting to write them for you.

_The Valley of Shadows_

Jyn has her mother's crystal.

It's the most precious item she's ever owned, and she keeps it on her person at all times. The kyber doesn't care about water; it doesn't care about heat and cold; it doesn't care about anything. It's just a crystal, after all. Sure, it's supposedly a _magic_ crystal, a Jedi crystal, but it doesn't hold anything for Jyn but memories.

Those memories are precious, though. Those memories are of joy, of hugs and kisses and comfort in the dark. Those memories are of hiding when it could still be at least partly a game. (It was never _just_ a game. As early as she can remember part of the hiding was real, even before they left Coruscant; her parents knew that danger was close, they just didn't know how to stave it off.)

Those memories are of her time with Saw and his band, and she hates and loves him in equal measures. He tried. Even as a child she knew that he was _trying_ , but his trying wasn't anywhere near what she needed.

Not that the universe made it easy for him. He wanted to save all the children, and if that involved making one little girl leave childhood behind too quickly, well, so be it.

Now the crystal holds even more memories, more losses. How many did they leave behind on Jedha? On Scarif? How many people did she meet and lose in the space of a week? Jyn sees them all, _feels_ them all, a massive weight pressing in behind her.

Kyber crystals went into the weapons of the Jedi, but in the Empire's hands they are nothing but horror.

“Jyn.” Cassian's voice is a quiet whisper. “Jyn, can you hear me?”

Jyn turns so that she's facing him. His face looks... strange. Distorted, the light bathing it a strange blue-white rather than anything that should come from a sun.

Her crystal is glowing. Jyn looks down at it and her breath catches in her throat. It's never done _that_ before. She reaches up to touch the crystal facets, her breath coming faster and harder as she does.

They're outside. They're planet-side. They're chasing an Imperial spy and his informant, the people responsible for murdering a rebel scientist and her family. Jyn's father and mother have been on her mind because of that, but Jyn wouldn't normally have lost herself in the middle of a chase.

“There's something here.” Cassian gestures around at the low, dark forest that surrounds them. “There's something...” He shivers, and Jyn reaches out to take his hand.

Cassian's fingers close over hers and he holds on tight. His breathing slows a bit, tension draining out of his arm.

Looking to her other side, Jyn isn't surprised to see Bodhi standing still, staring transfixed at something she can't see. His face, too, seems strange in the light of the crystal. Without asking Cassian she takes a step to the side, gratified to feel Cassian follow her without protest. Slipping her fingers into Bodhi's, she gives his hand a squeeze.

Bodhi starts to scream. His hands both rise, and it takes all her grip strength to keep him from pulling away. Then his eyes focus, taking her in, and he bites off the scream before it can start to echo. “J-jyn? I saw... I felt...”

“There's something here that shouldn't be.” Cassian continues to hold Jyn's hand. “Some kind of artifact, or... or... I don't know. Where are Baze and Chirrut?”

Jyn looks behind them, but there's no one there. “They were right here.”

Bodhi is looking around wildly, his hair starting to escape from the tight bun he put it in before they started this chase. “ _We_ weren't right _here_. These trees are wrong. They're older, taller... this isn't the forest where we were.”

Cassian has his blaster out, held low against his hip in the hand that isn't holding Jyn's.

Jyn curses quietly under her breath. How did this happen? Their team is better than this. Chirrut, at least, should have noticed if something weird was going on.

And maybe he did. Maybe that's why he and Baze aren't with them anymore.

Cassian tugs on her hand, leading them a little further into the forest. Jyn debates letting go of both him and Bodhi so that she actually has the ability to _do_ something, but her crystal is continuing to emit an eerie blue-white light, and she's not sure what will happen if she lets them go. Nothing, probably. Hopefully. But... Bodhi had looked so lost and scared before she took his hand.

And Cassian isn't letting her go.

They're in a potentially hostile situation, and Cassian isn't trying to make sure they're all ready to shoot at a moment's notice.

“Cassian...” Jyn digs her feet in, bringing them all to a stop. “What's going on?”

He blinks back at her, expression puzzled, blaster still ready but not aimed at anything. “We're investigating?”

Jyn looks down at their linked hands.

Cassian does, too, and his puzzled expression shifts to one of surprise and then fear. His fingers release hers.

Immediately his breathing shifts, becoming harsher. His pupils widen noticeably, his eyes staring past her.

Jyn snatches his hand back, gripping it tight. She's seen Cassian hurt and scared plenty of times, starting with him trying to die in her arms following Scarif. That doesn't mean she'll ever get used to it. “New plan, we keep holding hands.”

Cassian swallows and then gives a tight nod. “There's something... strange here. Something dangerous. Something that messes with our heads.” His voice only falters a little bit on the last sentence.

“Something the kyber protects us from.” Jyn frowns, trying to look down at her own chest and the glowing crystal there. Which is stupid—seeing it isn't going to give her any more information on what's happening. But sometimes, as she well knows, people do stupid things when they're in the middle of an unknown situation.

“I saw...” Bodhi's voice cracks. “I saw Jedha. Before you took my hand. I saw... so much was lost then. So much that didn't need to be. I saw it die. I saw the bones, and the places... the places where it had been too hot for bones.”

Jyn gives his hand a squeeze. “I was thinking about my parents. And about Jedha, and Scarif. Places where I lost... a lot of people.”

Cassian looks away from them, his jaw tight. “Wonderful. Some kind of psychic trick that makes you think about the dead.”

_Not THE dead._

The voice seems to come from all around them, and Jyn pulls Bodhi and Cassian in close to her.

_YOUR dead._

There hadn't been mist a moment ago, but now there is. It curls out from between the trees, claws around their ankles, swings in clammy curls down from the trees to send a chill up her neck. It takes all Jyn's strength—all her memories of Cassian and Bodhi, either in her arms or hunkered down with her behind enemy lines—to hold onto their hands instead of letting go.

_You come to the trial but refuse to participate._ The voice begins to have a direction, a form looming out of the mist. The being is massive, and not humanoid. There are too many legs swirling the mist into shadowy circles for it to even hope to be humanoid. _You are not Jedi. Who else would refuse to honor what we are?_

“We're just travelers.” Jyn's voice is firm and certain, just like she intended. “We had no knowledge of any kind of trial. We'd like to go.”

_Travelers._ The voice hisses, closer to her ear than it should be. _Travelers who come bearing arms. Travelers who come chasing prey._

“We're seeking justice.” Cassian's accent is heavy, telling Jyn more than anything else that this place has shaken him. “That's all.”

_All is a very hard thing for a mortal mind to hold._ The voice subsides, pulling back so it seems to emanate from the towering figure in the mist. _Tell me what you seek, each in their own word._

The words are torn from them at the same moment.

“Justice.”

“Peace.”

“Hope.”

Jyn winces, feeling as though someone slapped her on the back to tear that word—that precious, fragile word—out of her. Hope is what she's found, both with the rebel alliance and with the two men she's holding.

The creature bends down, and there is something above them in the mist now, something blocking out the light. _There are places in the universe where the real and the unreal are one. Where thought and action do not require connection. Where light and dark and all grey shades of the Force are made manifest. This is a place of reflection. Of grief and learning and letting go. Your prey pressed ahead. Will you?_

Jyn looks to the left and right. “We can't let him escape.”

Cassian nods, his eyes scanning the mist, watching the looming creature. “Will our protection hold if we press forward?”

A hand reaches out of the fog. It's made of bark and grass in the purples and reds of this planet's vegetation. It hovers just a bit above the kyber crystal. _If you go forward, the light will not protect you, though we will not seek to rob it of the power it already holds._

“We need to catch the man we're chasing.” Bodhi looks up into the obscured face of the monster above them. “If he went forward, so will we.”

Four eyes seem to gleam a bright, vibrant green above them, reminiscent of Skywalker's lightsaber. _So be it._

And the kyber crystal's light snuffs out.

Jyn immediately feels the fog press in even tighter. She is alone in a small, dark space, nothing but the half-packed bag from under her bed to keep her company. Her mother is dead. Her father might be too. She is _alone_ and—

No.

No, she isn't.

There are people next to her. Cassian is holding one of her hands, his fingers firm and steady; Bodhi is holding the other, and though his calluses are different, the fierceness in his grip is the same.

Jyn takes a step forward. The fog shifts, and in it she can hear voices. So many voices. Too many voices. How many dead does she know? How many has she killed? How many has she allowed to die? How many has she watched perish while she was helpless to do anything?

She misses the light of her crystal. It has always been there, even in her darkest time.

She misses light, period. When did the fog become so thick? When did her footing become so uncertain?

Her foot slips again, and she realizes that the reason her footing is uncertain is that she's stepping in blood. Fresh-spilled, just starting to get tacky. Is she still walking in a forest? Or is she somewhere else, on a starship, perhaps?

Or on Scarif. Perhaps they never left Scarif. Perhaps she imagined Bodhi flying the shuttle to them, only dreamed him dropping down on the other side of Cassian to help her load him into their ride home.

She can see their bodies easily enough. See Bodhi dead by the ship, and Baze and Chirrut curled together on the battlefield, and she and Cassian being swallowed up by the light of the weapon they didn't succeed in stopping, the weapon her father created—

“ _When the wolf is coming, we'll play out in the woods..._ ” Bodhi's voice trembles on the old children's song, but it penetrates through Jyn's vision of death and loss. “ _We'll play out in the woods, we'll play out in the woods. For when the wolf has come it will eat us all whole, eat us all whole—_ ”

Cassian joins in, though he sings in his native tongue, the words mingling with Bodhi's to create a wall of sound that presses back against the fog.

It's been too long since Jyn sang a song with other children. The melody is familiar, but the words won't come. The words don't matter, though. What matters is singing, is joining her voice to theirs, even if she doesn't hit the words or the rhythm quite right.

Why should the rhythm match theirs exactly, though? Every one of their childhoods was different. Bodhi had a normal one, more or less, though like them all he grew up in the shadow of the Empire. But the Empire wasn't so horrible to his people, so long as one didn't talk too loudly about the Jedi or the Guardians. They were a source of employment, a source of security.

For Jyn, the empire's shadow meant loneliness and isolation. It meant her childhood songs shifted, drifted away from that which most children knew as she fit it to her own quiet games filled with friends only she could see and name.

For Cassian... for Cassian the Empire was the end of childhood. He knows the songs, but Jyn suspects if she asked him why or how he would say something horrible like _I learned them to better infiltrate a group_.

But they don't need to match. They don't need to use the same language or the exact same notes. They just have to hold tight to each other and keep moving and keep singing. They have to walk through the paths slick with blood, and hold each other up when they start to slip or stumble.

They have to tug the others forward when something in the mist—some vision, some voice—tries to draw them away.

Until eventually, without any fanfare or warning, it's over.

The mist is gone.

The forest is just a normal forest again. The trees are tall, but not overly so. The ground is soft and springy with leaf litter beneath her feet.

There are four bodies on the ground in front of them.

Two she recognizes, and without thinking she releases Bodhi and Cassian's hands to run to their side. “Chirrut? Baze?”

“Fine.” Chirrut's voice is a husky whisper, and Jyn realizes that the man is crying, silent tear tracks down his face. “Well... perhaps not fine. But through the trial and still in one piece.”

From the way Baze is crying, his head buried against his lover's chest, Jyn isn't entirely certain of that. She's not going to push matters, though. Not when the other two must be—

“Dead.” Cassian is kneeling in the leaf litter next to their target. He holsters his blaster, his expression troubled.

Bodhi is by the last figure—the woman who betrayed her neighbors, the woman who tried to sell out others for her own safety. He presses a hand to her eyelids to close them, though he knows—they all know—that the eyes won't stay closed for long. “Also dead.”

Cassian looks back towards the forest. “Do you think...”

Jyn shivers, pressing a hand to her crystal. It feels just like normal, warmed by her body heat but otherwise unremarkable. “I don't know.”

“I think...” Chirrut is sitting up, holding Baze against him. The taller man isn't sobbing anymore, but he has one hand wrapped in Chirrut's robes as though that's the only thing keeping him grounded. “We should call for a pick-up from here.”

Jyn can understand that sentiment.

She moves to Cassian's side, placing a hand on his shoulder. He immediately leans back against her, pressing as much of himself as he reasonably can against her as he calls the shuttle. “K-2? Can you come get us?”

Jyn can't make out K-2's answer, but the general tone sounds both disbelieving and annoyed.

“No, I have no idea how we ended up here. No, I don't think there's danger. _No_ , I have not been compromised—Kay, please just bring the shuttle. We'll tell you what we know. Our targets are both dead. No, none of us are hurt. Well... nothing physical, at least. Thank you, Kay. Yes, we'll try not to teleport halfway around the planet again while you're coming.”

Bodhi has come up to lean against Jyn's back while Cassian talks to K-2. He presses his nose into her neck, seeking warmth as though this were one of their ice-desert missions and not a perfectly reasonable habitable planet.

Jyn buries one hand in Cassian's hair, holding on tight.

The other she reaches back to link with Bodhi's questing fingers.

She doesn't know exactly what it was they just faced. When they're back on the ship they can talk to Skywalker and Chirrut about it, see if they're able to piece something together.

But they faced it together. They walked out of another nightmare hand in hand.

That's cause enough to celebrate, and reason enough to keep holding on, to keep clinging to that fragile, shimmering glow of hope for as long as they possibly can.

**Author's Note:**

> The song is a bastardization of a Mexican children's song. It seemed appropriate.


End file.
